7 Quick Takes

I was sitting here at my computer, with my phone on the desk. A new phone (not an Iphone. I don’t do Apple. Just don’t like the ecosystem.) . It kept….pinging. No notifications came up. I cleared it. Made sure Google Assistant was disabled. I put it back down.

Ping.

Pick it up, look.

Again, no notifications. Put it back down.

Ping.

So I’m thinking…is it just the action of moving it around that’s doing this?

What to do? A search, of course. “Pixel won’t stop notifications.”

Ah-ha.

Now. Look at this photo and see if you can figure out what was happening. This is where I was setting it.

Which – because we are very cutting-edge here in Alabama – are equipped with RFID tags for checkout. The phone has the technology that enables it to be used to tap for payments, etc – and so every time I set the phone down on the books, it sensed the presence of the tag and tried to communicate with it.

I had read a bit about this before we went to Japan – how the country has consciously tried to increase tourism over the past few years – but this article sets it all in context and reaffirms my sense that I won’t be going over there for cherry blossom season…

Ninety-eight point five per cent of the population identify as ethnically Japanese and there are 127m of them. Respect, protocol, correct form – these are the absolute fundamentals of Japanese life. And a devotion to cleanliness, which is revered as a moral virtue. When my wife was a child she, like every other Japanese primary school student, cleaned the floors and windows of her school. There was no hired help, because the students did the cleaning. There was no shame in this act – just the opposite. For what could be more of a source of pride than in keeping your place of education spotlessly clean? It is a uniquely Japanese attitude not shared or even understood by the rest of this slovenly planet, which doesn’t even take its dirt-smeared shoes off before entering the home. Mass immigration was never going to fly in Japan. But Prime Minister Shinzo Abe hit on a brilliant ruse – let the foreigners in for a couple of weeks at a time and then send them back home. Not mass immigration as a saviour to Japan’s coffers, but mass tourism. So for the first time in its history, Japan was transformed into one of the world’s great tourist destinations. And it has worked. Spending around $1.3 billion, 600,000 tourists from the People’s Republic Of China came to Japan this spring for hanami – the ritual viewing of the sakura cherry blossoms, which bloom and die in a matter of days. Nothing is more essentially Japanese than hanami, a celebration of nature’s temporal beauty, and now the world is taking a selfie in front of those falling pink leaves. Abe was hoping for the number of international tourists to reach 20m by the time of the Tokyo Olympics, which start on 24 July 2020. But Japan shot past the 20m mark five years ahead of schedule. By 2017 the number of visitors had already reached almost 27m a year and Abe’s revised ambition is to attract 40m visitors a year by 2020 and 60m visitors a year by 2030 – which would make Japan a tourist destination almost twice as popular as Thailand.

I am a sucker for “Abandoned ___________” photo spreads and features. Ruins of any sort are my thing. Hitting close to home is the Abandoned Southeastwebsite which in its most current post features a crazy house not too far from where I live. It’s interesting that since putting up the post earlier in the week, the blogger has been able to update it with the news that the house has indeed been purchased and the new owner is planning to clean it up and renovate it. More photos at the What’s Left in Birmingham site. I feel like driving over there just to see if I can spot the feral pigs he mentions.

Best news of the week has been that one of my favorite blogs – Deep Fried Kudzu is back. Ginger blogs about travel and food, mostly, with particular interests in WPA public art, primitive found art and grave shelters. I can’t tell you how valuable her blog has been to me in the years I’ve lived down here – whenever we’ve got an adventure on the horizon, I search her blog for information on quirky things to see and good places to eat.

In art, the apostles are often portrayed in art with the means of their death, so you do see Bartholomew holding his flayed skin. The most well-known is the depiction in the Michelangelo’s Last Judgment.

This story suggests all kinds of interesting things about memory and oral transmission in eleventh-century England, and the way traditions were perpetuated within communities; it’s unusual to have such specific details of the means by which knowledge was transmitted from one generation to another. Young Eadmer, listening to Edwin and the others tell their story, was not very different from the children at St Bartholomew’s who ran the other day to receive their currant buns, watched over by their elders; one purpose of such ceremonies is to imprint their memory on the younger generation, specifically in this case the principle of St Bartholomew’s ancient tradition of charity. The elders were once children themselves, and one day the running children may be the watching hospitallians in their wheelchairs. With stories, current buns and biscuits, we ensure that our children know about the past so that one day they will remember and acknowledge it as we do.

NOTE: If you really want a copy soon – I have them for sale at my online bookstore (price includes shipping) Email me at amywelborn60 AT gmail if you have a question or want to work out a deal of some sort. I have many copies of this, the Loyola Kids Book of Bible Stories, the Prove It Bible and the Catholic Woman’s Book of Days on hand at the moment.

One Response

Non diversity is one reason Japan is so safe from murder with a point 28 per 100,000 murder rate ( the usa has moved up to 5.35…19 times Japan’s murder rate). And they recently used their death penalty on six subway terrorists. Fascinating notes you gave us on their tourist numbers.

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Birmingham, Alabama

July 2019

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